Buried:Paul-Ger­hardt-Kirche, Lüb­ben an der Spree, Spree­wald, Ger­ma­ny. His re­mains are in a crypt be­low the al­tar.

Gerhardt was the son of Christ­ian Ger­hardt, Bur­ger­meist­er of Graf­en­hayn­ichen, near Wit­ten­berg. He en­rolled at the Un­i­ver­si­ty of Wit­ten­berg in 1628. In 1655, he mar­ried Anna Maria Ber­thold. He ap­pears to have fre­quent­ly preached in Ber­lin in the 1640’s.

In 1651, Gerhardt was ap­point­ed, at the rec­om­mend­a­tion of the Ber­lin cler­gy, Lu­ther­an Probst (chief pas­tor) at Mit­ten­walde, near Berlin. In 1657, Gerhardt re­turned to Ber­lin as third dia­con­us of St. Ni­cho­las’ church. How­ev­er, Gerhardt be­came in­volved in the con­test be­tween Elect­or Fried­rich Wil­helm (who was of the Re­formed Church) and the Lu­ther­an cler­gy of Ber­lin; Ger­hard was de­posed from his of­fice in Feb­ru­ary 1666, though he still re­mained in Ber­lin. In No­vem­ber 1668, he ac­cept­ed the post of arch­i­di­a­co­nus at Lüb­ben an der Spree, was in­stalled in June, 1669, and re­mained there till his death. The mot­to on his port­rait at Lüb­ben read “The­o­lo­gus in crib­ro Sa­tan­ae ver­satus” (a the­o­lo­gian sifte­d in a sieve).